


Letter of the Law

by keysmash



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Community: help_haiti, Future Fic, M/M, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-09
Updated: 2010-02-09
Packaged: 2017-10-07 03:26:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/60937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keysmash/pseuds/keysmash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam says yes to Lucifer, and from there, things get worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Letter of the Law

**Author's Note:**

  * For [loverstar](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=loverstar).



> Written for [](http://loverstar.livejournal.com/profile)[**loverstar**](http://loverstar.livejournal.com/), who won me in the first round of bidding at [](http://community.livejournal.com/help_haiti/profile)[**help_haiti**](http://community.livejournal.com/help_haiti/). Beta by [](http://bansidhe.livejournal.com/profile)[**bansidhe**](http://bansidhe.livejournal.com/), who was even more helpful than usual with this fic. Contains self-harm, although not through cutting.

Dean made himself get up when the sky started to lighten in the east. The ground behind the filling station where he'd slept didn't have much grass, and it wasn't October yet but the nights were getting hard. He stretched, listening to the crack of popping joints all over his body, and then headed inside.

He didn't think anyone had seen him last night. Certainly, no one woke him up and kicked him off the property, but he hadn't heard anyone talking out behind the store, or hauling trash to the dumpster, or clicking their lighter as they lit up against the wall. It didn't mean no one had, but he was sleeping as light as he traveled these days, and he was pretty sure.

He filled his water bottles in the bathroom sink and then washed up, scrubbing his face and neck clean before checking over his shoulder and then doing his hands. If he was getting kicked out, he was going to be as clean as possible. There were paper towels here, instead of an air dryer, and Dean pulled a stack of them from the dispenser and tucked them into his backpack. He ran his hands through his hair and went back out. He always tried to buy something when he used bathrooms in small shops like this one, and he'd found enough money over the past few days to be able to do it now.

He filled himself a cup of coffee first, dumping as much sugar and non-dairy creamer into the cup as he could stomach, and then checked whether or not the cashier was watching him. Dean was the only guy in the store, and the guy had his elbows on the counter as he leaned forward and stared. Dean smiled a little and palmed a handful of sugar packets with the hand furthest from the counter.

The coffee would set him back seventy-nine cents, and the sign over the racks of hot dogs told him he could get a footlong for another buck. Dean put every condiment they offered onto it, onions and sauerkraut and pumps of slimy, lukewarm cheese sauce, and it barely fit into its Styrofoam carton when he finished. He pocketed a few more packets — mayonnaise (fat) and ketchup (sugar, vitamins) — and headed to the front to pay. He eyed the selection of fruit in a basket by the register, but none of it had been marked down even though everything was tiny and starting to bruise. He'd pick some up the next time he passed through somewhere with a big grocery store, if he could.

He still had his wallet, although the cards maxed out a while ago and no one would approve him, under any name, for a new one, and he was able to give the guy bills for the food. The cashier slid Dean's change to him across the counter instead of dropping into into his hand, and Dean fought back a grin at the dude's attempt to keep from touching him. Sometimes, it was like people just knew.

There was a metal bench in front of the store, next to a pay phone, and it had warmed as the sun rose. Dean sat down and ate his breakfast as slowly as he could make himself. The scrubby plains stretched out in front of him as far as he could see, flat and unbroken by anything except the stretch of highway next to the gas station. He had a long way to go.

A few years ago, Dean would have thought his hot dog was a gross mix of textures and temperatures, but it didn't bother him now. He ate it without really caring. It was all processed to death, Sam would have given him shit about it, but there was good stuff hidden underneath it. The bun was probably enriched, the sauerkraut and relish had been plants at one time, there would be calcium in the small percentage of his cheese that actually came from milk, and he could use the protein from the meat itself, regardless of how many fillers and preservatives it came with.

He finished it sooner than he liked. Even after wiping up everything that had spilled into the carton, Dean wasn't really full. He carried it around back to toss in the dumpster and found it just as empty as when he stopped here the night before. He must have arrived just after the garbage truck, and no one had thrown anything out since then. Maybe someone had come out during the night after all, found him sleeping there, and went back inside without leaving anything for him to pick through.

There was no rush hour in the middle of nowhere. Hell, there wasn't much traffic at all, with most of the people that stopped somewhere for the night either still asleep or just getting up. He set off down the highway, walking in the breakdown lane instead of the still-dewy grass, without even checking to see if there was someone he could hitch off of.

He made note of the first mile marker he came across, 213. Dean stuck his thumb into the road whenever he heard traffic, but it wasn't until 219 that anyone actually pulled to a stop behind him. It was an older Mazda model. Dean didn't recognize which one, but the car was in decent shape. A middle-aged woman sat behind the wheel, alone. Dean raised an eyebrow to himself as he dug for his card in one pocket and and then walked over to her passenger window.

"Hi," she said, when she rolled it down. He could see a checkered black and white hoodie balled up in the back, and an empty Happy Meal box on the floorboards behind the passenger seat. Someone's mom. "You need a ride?"

He nodded and reached inside, holding the index card by one corner and offering it to her. She took it and her face changed when she read it, settling into something like pity for just a moment before she nodded and then smiled again.

> _Hi, my name's Dean. I can't talk._
> 
> I'm going to California. If you could give me a ride, I'd appreciate it.
> 
> Thank you.

 

She clicked the button on her door to unlock his. "Come on in," she said. "I'm only going through to Sante Fe, but that'll get you closer."

Dean smiled at her before climbing inside. He tucked his bag between his feet and buckled up, then locked his door. She had the air conditioner running, and he closed his eyes for a moment as he let the cool air wash over him. The sun hadn't gotten too high in the sky, but he'd tried to keep a decent pace up, and he probably smelled, after the miles on the road.

Her name was Louisa, she told him over the course of the morning. She was driving out to spend the week with her mom, who was having hip surgery. She and her husband had three kids, and they were staying home; they had school and work and none of them could get out of it. Dean doubted her kids wanted to hang out at their sick grandma's house for a week, even if it would get them out of school, but he didn't mention it.

They stopped in some little town around noon and she pulled into the parking lot of a Jack in the Box before Dean could figure out a way to protest.

"Come on in with me," she said, once she parked. "You eat hamburgers?" Dean frowned at her for a moment before nodding slowly. "I figured you would, my oldest son does. He's about your age, did I mention that?"

Dean shook his head and frowned, then glanced down at her body for a moment before looking back at her face.

She laughed. "That's sweet of you, but yeah, he is. I had him young." She unlocked their doors. "Don't worry about it. I'd want someone to do the same for him."

Dean kept frowning, but in the end, he couldn't pass up the free meal, and so he followed her inside. She ordered for him, even bumping his combo meal up to a large, and pushed half of her fries across the table to him, after she slowed and then stopped eating.

_Thanks_, Dean mouthed.

"Of course," she said, and reached across the table to touch his arm. Her eyes unfocused slightly and she put her hand back on the table without acting as if anything was wrong, but Dean sighed all the same. He wasn't surprised when he came out of the bathroom and found her parking spot empty; he was just glad he'd thought to wear his backpack inside.

He stared at the soda machine for a moment before refilling his cup — would the sugar from a Coke be worth the dehydration? In the end, he filled up with water, and took more sugar packets on top of that. Couldn't take enough water into the desert with you.

He knew better than to try to hitch his way across the desert without any real supplies, but with his ride gone, it stood between where he was and where he was going. The sun was high overhead, without having made any move towards lowering for afternoon yet, and Dean sat back down in the booth he'd shared with Louisa while he thought.

There was a road heading north outta town, he thought. It wouldn't be hard to find, if he was right, but he didn't want to wander around, in the heat, in the process. And if he was wrong, he'd just be wasting time. He looked as far up and down the street as he could, from inside the building, but didn't see anything. He topped off his water one more time before heading outside.

It wasn't much better from out here, since Dean didn't see any signs that told him what he wanted to know. He'd noticed a library on the way into town, though, and he put his fast-food cup carefully in his bag, making sure to keep it upright, before heading that way.

The library turned out to be as small as the town, with a row of computers only three monitors long. Each one had a person sitting behind it, and Dean hoped this wasn't the sort of place that required a library card or a sign-in to use the internet. He passed a circular wire rack of books, all pulpy 50's sci fi, on his way back to the computers, and he grabbed one at random to read while he waited. He could feel the librarian watching him as he went, and he made sure to smile at her before sitting down and opening the book.

There was probably some easier way to go about finding where to go. Hell, the library probably had paper maps he could look at, but he tried to deal with people as little as possible these days. He tried to see if there was some obvious place maps would be, but nothing seemed to fit. He almost never had trouble in libraries, but he didn't want to risk it, either, so he stayed in his chair. One of the computers would open up eventually.

He wished Sam was there — Sam to know where the maps were kept because his library sense was tingling, Sam to talk to the librarians, Sam to take his laptop next door and just steal the wifi — before he caught himself, and stopped. He set his jaw and shook his head, and then dropped his gaze to the book.

.

Lucifer'd pulled the curtains back from the suite's window, which filled the entire eastern wall, as soon as he got them out of bed, and so the suite was bright with light. He didn't always sleep — didn't usually sleep, in fact, and he never did when things were busy.

Things were busy a lot.

He always took a full seven hours in bed before he gave Sam his time off, though, as if Sam's body was a time-share he needed to clean up before the next person came for their vacation. He lay down and decided to go to sleep with the same ease that he used to tell Sam's body to do anything else, and it was the only time Sam got to shut down, to not have to watch and listen and constantly be aware of his body's exhaustion.

Breakfast was a spinach and mushroom quiche, smoked salmon and cream cheese on a thick, crusty bagel, and fresh mango, cut into strips and turned inside out so that it looked like a yellow porcupine, along with two cups of French press coffee. Everything organic, everything fresh, everything delivered to the room hot and steaming. He ate mechanically, so that Sam didn't really have time to taste it, but for someone who claimed to hate humans, Lucifer sure knew his creature comforts.

He rose now, walked Sam's body to the long, dark chest of drawers, and stepped into pants, pulled on a shirt. Lucifer tended to dress them like a pimp with a Messiah complex and a fashion habit. When they passed the room's mirror, Sam saw today's getup was white jeans, tailored to fit perfectly, and a beige button-down, untucked, with the Versace crest embroidered over his heart like a name tag. Out of season, sure, but Lucifer ignored Sam whenever he thought about things like that, and no one else mentioned them.

"I have an angel to talk to this morning," Lucifer said as he sat down on the edge of the bed to put on his shoes. He talked aloud to Sam sometimes, usually about his agenda for the day, as if he wanted Sam to know what to expect. "Shouldn't take long, though. We'll have you back here in time for your afternoon."

Sam would have huffed if he could, would have rolled his eyes, and settled for just thinking _uh huh_. Lucifer chuckled, laughing at Sam with his own body, and tied the shoes. They were yet another pair of white loafers, these with pointed toes instead of the square he usually preferred, and Sam wondered again why he wore them.

Lucifer stood them up before closing his eyes. There was the same compression in Sam's chest that he remembered from being zapped around by other angels, and then a sudden rush of air, and when Lucifer looked around again, they were somewhere else. Sam caught a glimpse of narrow streets, lined with a mixture of modern and much older architecture, and the sun shining high in the sky, before Lucifer turned around and walked up a few steps to a doorway.

The handle wouldn't turn at first, but he gripped hard and turned Sam's wrist until the knob came off in his hand. It still wouldn't open after that — Sam guessed there was a deadbolt and maybe something else, a chain lock or something digital — but Lucifer moved his hand slowly over the door, and after a moment, it swung open a few inches.

The hallway inside was white and clean but narrow and poorly lit. It made Sam want to pull his arms in and hunch over, but Lucifer held his shoulders straight and back as they walked to a staircase and headed up. He didn't hurry or try to be silent; if someone was up there, they'd know he was coming. Sam figured that was part of the plan.

They climbed three flights before reaching the top of the stairs. Lucifer paused there and rolled Sam's shoulders a few times before smiling and walking across the hallway to the only door on the floor. He pushed it open with the fingertips of Sam's left hand, not touching it with his palm, and it swung open easily for him, all the way.

Inside, markings covered the wood floors: chalked devil's traps Sam recognized as some of the more intricate and powerful designs, and black runes he thought had been made with Sharpies, and beyond those, bloody variations of angel-banishing sigils that still shone wetly in the light from the room's single window. A woman about Sam's age had warded herself into the far corner. Strips of gauze wound around one of her arms, but she held herself upright and looked directly at Lucifer when he came inside.

"Simiel," Lucifer said, and gestured towards the floor. "What is all this? Are you this unhappy to see me?"

Simiel — and Sam remembered the name, but he couldn't pull up what this angel was associated with, or what tradition believed in her — cocked the woman's head slightly and smiled. "I remember the last time we met. I'm not eager to repeat the experience."

"We can avoid that," Lucifer said. "There's an easier way this can go."

"I'm staying out of it," Simiel said, and shook her head. Her curls bounced around her face and then fell still again.

At least her angel had bandaged her up right away. Sam knew what some vessels went through. Lucifer spared a moment to squeeze down tighter on Sam's consciousness, barely giving him the control to think for himself — _behave or your afternoon is gone_ —, and then let go again.

"I appreciate your ideals," Simiel went on. "I always have. I think you've known that. But I don't like how you're implementing them."

Lucifer rolled Sam's eyes.

"It made sense in the beginning," Simiel said. "But humans are around now, and we can't just —"

He stretched Sam's hand out in front of him and gestured slightly, a flick of the wrist. Simiel fell silent and slowly brought one hand up to touch the woman's throat, looking almost curious.

"Temporary," Lucifer said. "I'll let you fix it a little later."

The soles of his shoes sizzled as he stepped further into the room, walking slowly over the devil's traps. They didn't hold him in place, since he wasn't actually demonic, but they tended to smolder underfoot with him anyway. He'd burnt the soles of Sam's feet before, taking his time to make a point, and Sam tried to figure out if he could actually feel heat now, or if he was imagining it.

"Humans are around now, and we have to deal with them, we can't just go wiping them out — that's what you were going to say, right?" Lucifer asked. Simiel nodded, and he took another step towards the corner of the room. "That's pragmatic, I like it. And I think that if you apply that line of reasoning to something else, we're going to understand each other a lot better."

Simiel curled her vessel's lips, and Lucifer came closer. He'd almost reached the runes, and Sam didn't know what those would do, but he could smell smoke wafting up from his feet, and almost anything would be better than waiting for his shoes to burn through to his socks and then his skin.

"See, _I_ am around now." He smiled. "And you have to deal with me, and there is no wiping me out." Lucifer spun in a slow circle, showing himself off, and then finally stepped out of the traps and onto the runes. Nothing happened at all with them. Sam hadn't gotten a good enough look at them to tell what they were supposed to do, but Simiel didn't seem surprised that they didn't stop Lucifer. He kept going and stopped with the toe of one shoe in the bloody marks.

"Did you try to weaponize these or something?" he asked, looking down and studying the sigils for a moment. This close, Sam could see clear, oily liquid between Simiel and the ring of blood — holy oil, he guessed. A lighter lay on the floor beside one of her feet and her hands hung limply at her sides. Lucifer smiled at her, more sincerely than he had earlier, without even acknowledging the final trap she'd laid. "See, stuff like that is why I want you around. You've been enough trouble that I'd have just wiped you out if I didn't." He scuffed his feet through the blood, smearing it into the oil, and then got right into Simiel's space, putting one hand on the way on either side of the woman's head. "I've given you enough time for this. We're going to the ocean soon, and you're coming with us. Find me before the sun rises again, or I'll come and find you."

He stroked one finger over the vessel's throat. Sam could feel her pulse racing before Lucifer pulled away and straightened up. Simiel cleared the woman's throat as Lucifer turned and walked back through the mess on the floor. The blood on his shoes burnt when he hit the traps again, crackling like water in a hot pan.

"This isn't what God wanted," Simiel said.

Lucifer paused at the door without looking back. "God threw me in Hell for staying true to Him. God doesn't know what's best." He took a step into the hall, then stopped again. "That's sunrise here, by the way, not any other place."

He didn't look at Sam's feet as they went down the stairs, so Sam didn't know if they were leaving foot prints. He imagined them stretching all the way back up the staircase, invisible at the ground floor but appearing somewhere towards the second story: just grey smudges at first, but eventually turning black and red, leading in measured steps to Simiel's room.

_Can she even get out of that corner?_ Sam thought, curious and unable to keep from asking. Lucifer would know his train of thoughts anyway, and he shrugged Sam's shoulders as they headed out the door.

"We'll see, won't we."

The sun was still bright when they headed back outside, slipping down towards the western horizon. Lucifer hadn't put a coat on before they left and it was cold, but he headed down the sidewalk without letting them shiver. He stopped at an intersection and looked up and down the street. Sam saw shops in the the distance one way, where the buildings in the other direction all seemed to be split into apartments. There weren't many people out, which was always good. Sam never wanted to see many people, these days.

"What do you think, coffee?" Lucifer asked, out loud.

_No_, Sam thought. _Not right now._

"If you say so." He closed Sam's eyes, and with hardly any warning, took them back around the world to the hotel.

.

It was a dream, Dean realized that almost right away, but he didn't try to wake himself up.

He was spread out in the back seat of the car, with Sam pressing him down, and sun beating in through all the windows. It was hot in there, the windows rolled up tight and Sam's skin bare on all of his, but Dean kept his hands wrapped in Sam's hair and didn't let him pull away. They were both naked, and sweat stuck to Dean's belly, where Sam lay on top of him.

The upholstery felt familiar beneath his bare skin, worn smooth and slick, and that was the first clue something was wrong. He hadn't seen the car in weeks, since he broke into a self-storage unit when he finally couldn't get any more gas and parked her there, then sent the address and the spare key to Bobby in an unsigned envelope. He didn't know if the letter made its way to Bobby or if it disappeared somehow, the way his calls and texts never connected and his emails bounced back undeliverable, but he could hope.

Sam was there, too, which was another hint. Sam was warm and firm and heavy above him, with his cock hard against Dean's hip and his hands almost rough on Dean's body, and Dean knew he wasn't real. He _knew_ it, he did, he knew that the last he had seen of Sam was the kid's back as he walked out on him in Detroit, letting someone else wear his body, but that didn't stop Dean from holding Sam against him now. He wrapped one leg around Sam's waist, pinning him down, and didn't let go of his grip on Sam's hair as he kissed him. Sam's arms were tucked under Dean's body, keeping them together, and so neither of them had a hand to spare for their cocks, but it didn't matter. They'd come with less effort that this, early mornings when neither of them were awake, and late nights in the shower after washing off ash and dirt, and Dean could shove his dick against Sam's belly for the rest of his life without needing anything different.

He kept Sam's mouth against his as well as he could, but time shuddered and jumped ahead, one of those horrible dream transitions that took you out of the good part and into the shit you didn't want to see, and then Sam was sitting up on his knees, still with Dean's legs sprawled all over him, and smiling down at him.

"I miss you, Dean," he said.

Dean tried to pull him back down, but he couldn't get a grip. His hands slid off Sam as if he'd been oiled. Sam watched him, then shook his head and set back further, settling onto his heels. He shouldn't have been able to sit as tall as he was without bumping into the roof, but he straightened up anyway and wrapped his hand around his dick. Dean tried to touch him again and couldn't; he tried to grab his own cock, but the same thing happened. His fingers fell away as if there was nothing substantial, nothing worth holding.

"You should say yes to Michael," he said, and closed his eyes as he rolled his hips. He said it every time, and that was always the final jolt that took Dean from a dream into a full-blown nightmare. He shuddered awake.

_I won't,_ he mouthed, then rubbed one hand over his face and sat up. He'd meant to sleep off the hottest part of the day underneath the overpass that would take him north, but he misjudged how quickly the shadows would move, and the shady spot where he lay down was now directly under the sun. No wonder it had felt hot in the dream: just the sun, and nothing more.

He stretched before pulling his backpack up, from where he'd been using it as a pillow, and shrugged back into it. Dean took a swig of water from one of his bottles before tucking it back into the bag and heading under the overpass, to the eastern side of the road. It was shadier here and instantly easier going. He was heading north now too, following the road, and it was good to have a direction.

.

He was always right under the surface, even after he withdrew enough to give Sam his break. Sam could feel him there, just nudging at his consciousness, as he slipped into running shorts and laced up his shoes and let the hotel door fall carefully behind him. He hadn't put on a shirt and the hallway was silent, save for the chilly hum of the air conditioner, as he worked his way down to the lobby and outside.

The lobby was quiet as well, with a few sleek employees checking in guests at the front desk but no one actually sitting in the furniture scattered before the wall of windows. As clean and gleaming as Lucifer kept him, no one glanced Sam's way as he walked across the hardwood floors and let himself outside. He started running right off, without warming up any more than he had getting out of the building, but he settled into it anyway.

Lucifer kept him looking good, wanted the body he wore to turn heads all the time, and Sam wasn't used to this. He had running shorts these days, with a built-in mesh sling to hold his junk in place as he went. He had a chip in his shoe that synced up with his iPod to tell him how fast he'd gone. Hell, he had an iPod — not the clunky white one Jess gave him for his birthday, but a shining silver and black touch screen model. His didn't have the Internet, like the ones in the commercials, and Sam didn't know how he'd rigged that, but it was what it was. Sometimes Sam made notes in it, wrote letters he knew he'd never send, but there was no point in keeping them in his head. He was there anyway, tied up tightly in Sam's thoughts, and this way, Sam could have them all in one place.

He pushed himself hard these days, whenever he got to run. This was as much power as he got, now, and running full-out down hills was almost as good as the rush he'd felt after pushing Ruby's bleeding arm away from his mouth — or better, because that had been all in his head, and this spread throughout his entire body.

He'd run like this when he was a kid, when he and Dean picked arbitrary points on the horizon to race to. When they'd been brothers and nothing else, when their entire relationship was something that could be lived in front of their father. The speed was easy then, but now he worked for it. His mind wouldn't shut up, wouldn't ever shut up, but if he pushed himself far enough, he could eventually stop thinking about Dean and start thinking about how much he hurt physically, right this second.

He didn't pay attention to other people as he went. He crossed streets without looking, and although he'd darted into rush hour gridlock before, he'd never been so much as honked at. He never tripped, never fell, but by the time Sam felt the nudges get more insistent, he'd been going for more than an hour, faster than he used to go on everyday runs. He pushed himself even harder on the way back to the hotel, almost sprinting, and only slowed to a walk once he passed the front doors without going inside. He walked around the block once, trying to catch his breath, but his lungs ached, and his legs weren't any better. It felt good.

Sam didn't decide to go inside so much as he just found himself going, through the lobby and up the floors. He took the elevator this time, instead of the stairs, and went to the room without looking around. There was a pocket with a zipper on his shorts, just tiny enough for a keycard, and he took it out without looking. Sam was still in control, sort of, but not really. His time was up; he was slipping away.

It always felt the same these days, so gradual that he barely noticed it. Boiling a frog to death. He turned the deadbolt behind him, stripped out of his shoes and clothes, and by the time Sam was in the shower, Lucifer was in charge again.

He closed Sam's eyes while he tipped his face up to the spray, and drank down what water he could get. He never touched Sam, not in the bad-touch sense of the word, and Sam tried to at least enjoy the water on his sore muscles. This was better than a lot of things.

Lucifer wrapped a towel around Sam's waist and another around his hair, and smoothed lotions from three different bottles into his skin. Sam kept trying to look away from his reflection in the mirror, to close his eyes, even though he couldn't. He could never look away, but he always struggled, right after he gave up control again. He always fought the most when it was new.

It had been that way the first time, backed into a corner in Detroit with Dean unconscious and bleeding way too quickly behind him. Sam said no until Lucifer leaned in and gave him a good look at the body he'd scammed his way into, at the holes in his skin where chunks of flesh had given way around the strain. "I'll take him instead," he'd said, and looked deliberately around Sam, at his brother.

"You can't," Sam said. "He's not — you said you need me."

Lucifer shrugged. "Any port in a storm."

"He won't say yes."

"So I throw him back in Hell, give it a while." He grinned at Sam, somehow mournful and conspiratorial all at once. It didn't reach his eyes. "It's not gonna take nearly as long to break him this time. I can wait."

And Sam knew what Dean would say about it, knew how he should answer, but he couldn't hold out against that threat. All he could do was nod. "You heal him now, from this. Right away," he said, after a long moment.

"Done." When Sam opened his eyes, Lucifer was smiling at him again. The crinkles around his eyes tugged at his disintegrating skin. He nodded behind Sam, and Sam saw that Dean's bleeding had stopped.

"Nobody touches him," Sam said. "I don't want anyone to be able to get to him — angels or demons, no one."

"Of course not," Lucifer said. "He'll be untouchable. I'll protect him for you. No one who wants to hurt him will even be able to talk with him."

Sam looked behind himself again. Dean's breathing was coming easier, steadier, and he'd stopped the quiet moans Sam hadn't even noticed until they were gone.

"Don't you go backing out on me, now," Lucifer had said, still smiling, and Sam shook his head.

"I consent," he said. He closed his eyes as a blinding light came from the rotting vessel, and by the time it faded, he wasn't in charge of his eyes any more.

Lucifer had rolled his shoulders, then stood up straighter, clapped his hands twice, and laughed. Sam fought, almost nauseated at being moved with no control over the process, and Lucifer ignored him. Meg had laughed at him when she'd possessed him, taunted him, but Lucifer acted like Sam wasn't even there. He'd glanced over Sam's shoulder on his way out of the warehouse, and so Sam got one last glimpse of Dean, lying bloody and prone next to a corpse, before Lucifer looked back towards the door and left.

Now, Lucifer dressed him again before going to the phone and ordering up more food — a smoothie made with soy milk and protein powder, in deference to Sam's run, and then, almost in spite of it, a few slices of French bread and some butter.

Every time he moved, whether leaning to the side to replace the phone in its cradle, or standing to walk over to the closet for a pair of shoes, or bending to tie them, Sam's body ached. His muscles pulled and protested at being overused, and Sam relished in the feeling. It was _his_ body, still his, and maybe he only controlled it one afternoon out of every week, but he could find ways to make it last longer.

"I could get rid of it," Lucifer said. He made Sam's face smile. "It hurts because there are tiny tears in your muscles. I could heal them, and then this would all be over."

Sam kept his part of his mind blank for as long as he could, trying not to react, and then gave a mental shrug. _Yeah, you could_, he thought. He knew Lucifer could, and it was pretty pointless to pretend he didn't.

"There's no reason to push yourself this hard," he said. "You're not going to change things, except maybe I'll stop rewarding you for good behavior."

_Maybe I just like it._

Lucifer shook his head and then sat down as room service knocked and let themselves in. Sam watched him track the kid as he arranged the food on the table, and he wondered if this one would be killed for the fun of it, the hell of it, or if he'd go home to his parents that night.

"Don't worry about it," Lucifer said. The kid, who hadn't acted like anything was wrong, looked up and frowned.

"Sir?" he asked.

Lucifer shook Sam's head. "No, nothing." He leaned back in the chair, folded his hands over his belly, and kept watching. The kid at least hurried through the rest of his work, arranging silverware wrapped in a napkin and a sweating glass of ice water next to the plate before smiling once in their direction and heading out the door without angling for a tip.

"Well, let's eat up." Lucifer picked up some bread. "Busy night ahead of us." He ate quickly, almost making Sam's stomach cramp up, but it calmed him as much as it could.

He'd just finished when a knock came at the door. Lucifer smiled and stood, then brushed his hands off over the plate and went to answer. Simiel stood there, several hours before her deadline, and Lucifer stared at her for a moment before standing back and letting her enter. She'd changed clothes since Sam saw her last, and had straightened her vessel's curly hair so that it hung to the middle of her back instead of bouncing around her collarbones. Sam remembered seeing dress-casual along the lines of what she was wearing back in Stanford — she had on a blazer and nice leather shoes, but also torn jeans and a low-cut tank top — and she'd worn her sunglasses inside.

Lucifer gestured to the suite's table, across from where they'd just been eating, and Simiel paused for a moment before crossing the room and sitting. He followed her over after a moment and stood behind his chair, leaning over it to rest his hands on the table. Simiel cocked her head at him, then slid off her sunglasses, folded them, and put them down in front of his empty plate.

"You were right," she said, and smiled. "I've come to work with you."

Lucifer nodded. He straightened just slightly, holding himself up on only the pads of Sam's fingers for a moment, and then pushed himself up all the way. "You've come to work for me," he corrected, and Sam wished, like always, that he didn't have to watch, to hear, as Lucifer reached and picked up Simiel's hands. "Which one of these does your vessel favor?"

"She's right handed," Simiel said. Lucifer didn't give her any more warning than dropping that hand before taking her left hand between both of his and bending her fingers back, all four at once, so that they broke with a series of sharp cracks. Simiel cried out, but when Lucifer shook his head, didn't try to pull away. He turned her hand roughly and snapped her thumb as well, then flung her hand away. She gaped up at him, looking stupidly surprised, and cradled the hand to her vessel's chest.

"You're not to take a new vessel," he said. "You're not to heal this one, you're not to block out the pain, you're not to take medicine for it. If they don't heal properly, I'll fix that for you later." He reached out and cupped her chin, very gently, and pulled her face up so that she had to meet his gaze. "And you should keep in mind that, the next time you don't answer my commands right away, the punishment will be much worse than this."

"Yes," she said, right away. "I'll remember, yes."

"Get out," he said. "Go next door. They'll give you your first assignment."

He sank back into his chair as Simiel scrambled out of the room. He didn't watch her go, so Sam couldn't see her leave, but he heard the door open and then fall shut, and a few moments later, a knock on the door next to them. It was the wrong room, the demon making preparations for California was on the other side, but she'd figure it out.

She'd left her sunglasses on the table. They were clunky, with white frames and grey lenses, and Sam wondered if Simiel had picked them out or if her vessel had. Lucifer swept them onto the floor and picked the smoothie up again. He sipped while they listened to Simiel try the other door.

.

Dean went the rest of the day without anyone stopping to pick him up. It was almost just as well, until the sky started to darken and the day turned cold as it turned into night. Until Dean realized that he wasn't going to make it into the next town until tomorrow, unless someone picked him up in the middle of the night. Until he heard thunder in the distance and couldn't tell if it would pass over him or not.

He had his coat folded up in his bag, though, and a baseball cap in case it did start to rain, and a blanket somewhere in there as well. He didn't have food, really, but he had salt and sugar and water, and he could keep going for a long time off of that. Dean walked on until the sunset had faded entirely into darkness. The road wasn't lit well enough for him to be able to see, and he didn't want to spend any more time out here than he had to, but he also didn't want to break an ankle.

He dug out the coat — he always tried to keep it off for as long as he could, so that putting it back on was nice, something special — and the blanket when he stopped. He didn't find any more layers, no matter how hard he tried, and he knew better than to light a fire. It would get cold, even hunched down in the storm ditch beside the road, but someone would stop, if he had a fire. And he wasn't messing with that, not in the middle of the night. Not when he was trying to sleep.

Even when he tried to smush the long grass down into something resembling a cushion, the ground was cold and hard. Camping fucking sucked, all right, but Dean shoved his bag under his head anyway. He wrapped one hand in the backpack's strap, took hold of his knife's handle with the other, and was out before he had time to think about it.

Someone was sitting cross-legged in front of him when he woke up the next morning, in the pale purpley-gray that came before dawn. She was just watching him, her hands on her knees, and she smiled a little when he scowled and sat up.

"Hello, Dean," whatever angel he was dealing with this time said. "I've come to talk to you."

He rolled his eyes as he stuffed the blanket away, then stood and walked a few more feet away from the road. The angel stayed put as he took a leak, but although he tried to walk around her and keep getting down the road, she hopped up as well and stayed at his shoulder.

"I know about the whole —" She waved a hand at his throat, and Dean rolled his eyes again. "The whole thing, so you can just nod, if that works."

He shook his head, but she kept going.

"It just seems obvious, by now, that the only thing you can do is to say yes to Michael. I mean..." She trailed off.

Dean guessed this was supposed to be a reference to what one of the first angels to drop in had called his horribly tragic situation. He moved to walk next to the road again and hoped she'd take the hint.

None of them ever did, though. "And I know you can't actually say yes, but there are other things you can do." She reached into her pocket and pulled out the card he carried, the one he gave to people when he couldn't avoid interactions. He didn't know how she'd gotten it, but whatever. He could make a new one. "Or you can nod," she tried. "It'd be so easy, and then this could all be over."

He shook his head. _Sam_, he mouthed. _I'm not going against him._

She nodded, and they walked for about a quarter of a mile in silence before she tried again. "He's already gone against you, though," she said. "He's gone against everyone."

Dean shrugged. Yeah, that was true, and he knew he was probably playing right into Sam's hand, but he didn't care. After what he'd seen, back to the future, he was staying out of it entirely. Maybe the world would burn, but there seemed to be fuck-all he could do about it now.

"You can fix it," she pressed.

He shook his head again. When she sucked in air to keep going, Dean stopped, and so she stopped with him. He studied her face for a while, watching her try to keep her expression calm and soothing, and then reached out and touched the back of her hand with one finger. Her eyes slid blank and when he turned to keep walking, she didn't follow. He went for another few minutes before turning back, but she was gone. Dean waited for a moment, making sure the angel hadn't left the vessel there to fend for herself, out in the middle of nowhere, but no one stood up out of the grass.

He'd stopped keeping track after the seventh angel found him using human contacts, people who'd seen him without touching him, and tried to talk him into saying yes. More had come after that, but he didn't know how many. They all tried the same tactics — it's the only thing left to do, you have to stop it, you have to stop _him_. As if they'd forgotten that taking out Lucifer meant taking out his vessel as well, and that that meant taking out Sam. As if they'd forgotten that Dean might care about that issue.

Maybe Sam had missed the buzz he'd gotten off of Ruby, and figured that pumping demon blood through his veins was better than sucking it down; maybe he'd been playing Dean all along, ever since he crawled his way out of his grave; maybe he'd just been bored. Whatever his stupid, selfish reason had been, Dean didn't care. He wasn't going after Sam to smite him, the way he knew the angels were. He was going after Sam to save him, the way Dad said he might have to. The way he should have done years ago, and then done for himself as well.

Dean had seen what he looked like, hunting Sam down, and it wasn't something he would have chosen even if he could carry on a verbal conversation, or touch people without making them forget all about him. He would have liked having a team, a home base, a cache of supplies, but that wasn't his life any more — not showy gestures, not dramatic plans, but one tiny, hopeless effort. Dean knew his prophetic texts — the beast would come out of the sea, and it would probably be coming sometime soon. Based on the apocalypse's weird preoccupation with their personal lives so far, Dean thought he knew exactly which sea it would be coming from. He just needed to get himself to San Francisco Bay before Lucifer got Sam there, and then he could fix it.


End file.
